Bookless: Just a Writer

I don’t have a book. There, I said it.

Oh, I own books. Thousands. They line my living room, accumulate in my bathroom, peek out from my purse. But none of them have my name along the spine. That’s right, I am a writer but I don’t have a published book. It’s not that my words have never appeared in a book; I’ve written for several published essay collections. But this, it appears, doesn’t count. This is not my rule, but it is, more or less, the truth.

I have been writing, and getting paid for it, for roughly thirty years. I write and (most of the time) the resulting words appear someplace—magazines, newspapers, journals, online. I teach writing and I edit others’ writing and I have one of those fancy advanced degrees that says I’m a writer and I have paychecks from the New York Times. I even have a room of my own. What I don’t have is a book. It’s possible this condition might be temporary. I’m fifty, which is the new forty. My friend Pam says so in her published-with-only-her-name-on-it book.

I often find myself explaining this hole in my writer’s resume in any number of awkward situations because deep down, I probably harbor a little of that same bias I abhor in others—the odious idea that there are authors and then there are the great unpublished, you know, the “just writers.”

I understand the distinction, and then, I don’t.

At the major university where I teach creative writing, only the continuing education program is open to me. To teach in the wider university writing department, one has to have at least one solo (traditionally published) book. I get that, because those who do teach in that department are each authors of multiple critically reviewed, wonderful books, some of which I’ve read myself and thought, “Is it possible to write that well? Really?”

What I don’t get: An agent telling my friend, with ten years of experience writing long-form literary narratives for prestigious magazines, that her book proposal would be a hard sell, because she’s “unpublished.”

And this: At a local writers conference, a perk was that ten copies of “your book” could be sold on-site. I shipped off a box of one of the traditionally published essay collections I contributed to, only to get a panicky call explaining this perk was for “authors.” At the event, the sales table was mostly populated by self-published books, homemade chapbooks with misaligned staples, and a collection of compiled celebrity quotes in which the “author” wrote a three-paragraph introduction.

So let me see if I understand. The traditional book publishing industry says you are not published, and certainly not an author, until they publish you. The self-publishing industry (and those who champion it) says you are an author the minute you publish yourself. And the rest of the world?

At my recent high school reunion, when asked what I do, I said, “I’m a writer,” and of course was next asked, “Do you write books?” I admitted that I don’t and little by little people urged, in almost a stage whisper, that I simply had to find Peter because, “He’s published!” I was thrilled to meet Peter— turns out he’d written that magic hockey stick book my younger son once adored. Peter conducted himself admirably, asking about my work, not my book. He was probably once bookless too.

Maybe bookless is not so much a period as a comma. I haven’t yet piled up four dozen rejections for that memoir manuscript in my drawer. Two agents (out of two) were interested (and then not), and once, a university press asked to see the full manuscript—then promptly went out of business.

I still have time. You never know. In thirty years, in the nursing home, I may lean over and say, “You know, I’m an author.” To which in reply I’m likely to hear, “Auditor, eh? I was an accountant myself.”

And there are still people like Paul, who I bumped into at the reunion. Once my tenth grade crush after he donned tights to play King Arthur in Camelot, he’s now a vascular surgeon. I braced for the inevitable, “What book have you written?” but instead he nodded and said, “Wow. Writing is something I’ve always wanted to be good at, but I’m just not.”

Wow. He caught me so flat-footed I almost blurted, “Wait! I’m not an author, only a writer.” I didn’t. I shut up, smiled, and got another glass of wine.

Only now, I’m waiting for the inevitable Facebook update in which Paul announces that he’s about to publish—something. Then, he’ll be a still-buff former stud muffin, and a surgeon, and an author.

Me? I’ll be a writer, still.